The Karma of Vocation

Schmidt Number: S-3289

On-line since: 15th September, 2012

I

Tomorrow I shall begin my discussion of the problems related to
the connection of the spiritual scientific impulses with
various unclarified tasks of the present time, and the
influence that spiritual science must exert on individual,
especially scientific, problems. Then I should like to refer to
what I may call, in the sense of the fifth post-Atlantean
cultural epoch, the karma of human vocation.

Today I shall take as my point of departure something that
seemingly has little to do with that theme, but it will afford
an opportunity to connect various related matters. I shall
endeavor to point out the element in Goethe's life that
characterizes him especially as a personality of the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, and much to which I have recently
referred will, of course, be echoed in my remarks. I should
like to bring before your souls the very facts pertaining to
this personality that will enable anyone to distinguish
important phenomena of the advancing post-Atlantean cultural
epoch. In relation to the spiritual interests of humanity, the
life and personality of Goethe are comprehensive and decisive
to an extent that can hardly be ascribed to any other
individual. Still, it may also be said that, in spite of much
that has occurred, his life and personality have had the least
possible effect on our lives. This, however, must be attributed
to the very nature of our modern culture. It may be asked how
it can possibly be said that the life of Goethe has remained
without effect. Are not his works known? Has not an edition of
his works, consisting of hundreds of volumes, been published
recently? Did not his published letters number six or seven
thousand by the turn of the century, and today number almost
ten thousand? Is there not a wealth of literature concerning
Goethe, one might almost say in every civilized language? Do
not his works continue to be produced on stage? Is not his
major work, Faust, brought again and again before the
minds of men?

Now, I have often referred recently to the strange error of an
illustrious contemporary scholar, which is really far more
symptomatic of the character of our time than one might assume.
A dominant scientist, this scholar speaks of the significance
of the scientific world conception in such a way that he
presents it as being the most brilliant, not only of our age,
but of all ages in human history. He concludes that although it
is hard to prove that we live in the best of all worlds, it is
certain to the scientist, at least, that today we humans live
in the best of all epochs, and we might exclaim in the words of
Goethe:

‘Tis delightful to transport
Oneself into the spirit of the past,
To see in times before us how a wise man thought,
And what a glorious height we have achieved at last.’
(Note 1)
[*Except when noted otherwise, quotations of
Goethe's works are from translations by Ann Swanwick.]

This noted scientist
(Note 2)
is gravely in error; he
presents this as his own innermost sentiment and believes that
he is thereby associating himself with Goethe, who is renowned
for his knowledge of the world and of man. But he is really
associating himself with Wagner, whom Goethe sets up as a foil
to the Faust figure. Yet such a blunder contains at least a
good bit of the honesty of our age because this person speaks
more genuinely than the numerous people who, in quoting Goethe,
have Faust on their tongues, but really have an
undisguised Wagner attitude of mind. As a basis for subsequent
reflections, let us, then, bring up before our mind's eye the
life of Goethe as a spiritual phenomenon.

If
we wish to study human life in connection with the important
question of destiny, if we study the questions of karma, we
should remember that Goethe was born in a city and under
conditions clearly of much meaning for his life. The family of
Goethe's father had come to Frankfurt in the seventeenth
century, whereas his mother's family, the Textors, was old,
established, and highly respected, so much so that from it the
mayors of Frankfurt were chosen. This fact alone signifies the
respect enjoyed by the family at that time. Goethe's father was
a man with an extraordinarily strong sense of duty, but for a
man of his time, he also possessed a broad range of interests.
He had traveled in Italy and representations of important Roman
creations, about which he liked to talk, hung on all the walls
of his Patrician Frankfurt home. What was dominant in the
French culture of his time completely permeated the life of
Frankfurt and most intimately influenced Goethe's home. The
important world events were part of the life in his home, and
his father took a deep interest in them. Goethe's mother,
moreover, was a woman of the most spontaneous human sentiment,
sharing directly in everything that connects human nature with
the legendary, the fabulous, everything that lifts man aloft
above the commonplace as if on the wings of poetic fantasy.

In
Goethe's boyhood days it was much more possible to grow up
unconfused by those disturbing influences that affect children
today because they are dragged into school at a relatively
early age. This did not happen to young Goethe; he developed
extraordinarily freely in his parents' home under the austere
but never harsh influence of his father and his poetically
endowed mother. In later years he could recall with inner
happiness these years of his boyhood and childhood that led to
a ripe humanness. Many things that we read today in Goethe's
story of his life,
Poetry and Truth,
though decked out
in a somewhat pedantic humor, have more meaning than may be
supposed. In telling how he practiced the piano,
(Note 3)
there is a profoundly human significance; the fingers of his
hands, as if playing mythological roles, become soul-endowed,
independent figures. They become Thumbling, Pointerling — I
say this without sentimentality — and acquire certain mystical
relations to the tones. This indicates how Goethe was to be
guided into life as a complete human being. Not only a piece of
this man, the head, should be guided, as so often happens,
one-sidedly into life to be followed by the support of the rest
of the body, developed through all sorts of athletics and
sports; but, on the contrary, the body permeated by spirit to
its very fingertips should be related with the outer world.

We
must take into account from the very first the marked
individuality of the innate endowments and nature of Goethe.
From his earliest youth, everything pointed to a definite
orientation of his life. As he grows in childhood, he is just
as strongly inclined to follow with complete absorption the
charming and stirring fairy tales and other narratives of his
mother, thus even as a boy bringing his fantasy into living
activity, as he is also inclined to escape from her and
especially from his austere father. Slipping away into the
narrow alleys, he would observe all sorts of things and also
become entangled in varied situations through which he
experienced in vital sentiments and emotions much that is
stored up in human karma. His stern father guides the boy in a
certain matter-of-fact way to what people in those days thought
could provide support and direction in life. The father is a
jurist who has grown up among, and is permeated with, Roman
points of view; the son's soul, too, absorbs these views. In
this process, however, through viewing the works and treasures
of Roman art that represented what is essentially Roman, there
was kindled in the boyish soul a certain aspiration for what
had been created in the culture of Rome.

Everything tended to situate Goethe in a quite definite way
within the life of his time. In this way, he became, between
the third and fourth centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean
period, a personality bearing within him all the impulses of
that period. Early on, he becomes a self-sustained personality,
living out of his own nature, free of everything that binds a
man in a fixed, pedantic way to those certain forms of one or
another group of social ties. He learns to know social
relationships in such a way that they affect him, but he is not
united with them. He always keeps a certain isolated pedestal
upon which he stands and from which he can establish
connections with everything. From the very beginning, however,
unlike so many others, he does not excessively identify himself
with anything or with the environing circumstances. To be sure,
all this results from a peculiarly favorable karma in which,
when considered objectively, we shall find a solution for
profound questions and problems regarding karma in general.

After Goethe had been introduced by his father to the field of
jurisprudence, he was sent to the University of Leipzig, which
he entered in 1765 at a relatively early age. We must not
forget that when he joined this university life he was not
tormented and exhausted by those strenuous exercises that must
be suffered for an even longer period of time by young people
in our day who are trying to pass the battery of final
examinations at the conclusion of high school, the
Abitur. After having passed their examinations, these
young people are anxious to wipe the most recent learning
experiences from their minds and enter a university in order to
enjoy life. No, young Goethe had not entered the University of
Leipzig simply to idle away his time but, nevertheless, he was
not above skipping lectures and using the time saved for
something else, as was done by many students. However, as he
enlisted in the lofty and famous scientific life of the
university, he came into circles that had never failed to
awaken a longing in him whenever he had heard about them.
Indeed, he knew above all that the famous Gottsched
(Note 4)
worked at the university, Gottsched whose head held all the
learning of the time and who expressed it in writing and orally
to those associated with the contemporary culture of Leipzig.
To be sure, Lessing's
(Note 5)
great impulse was still to be
felt in Leipzig, but it was natural for Goethe to think that
the lofty Gottsched would introduce him to the entire scope of
contemporary wisdom, enabling him to study conjointly
jurisprudence and philosophy and whatever else a man of the
world might derive from theology and learning regarding
supernatural things.

Goethe, however, who possessed without doubt a certain sense
for aesthetics, was slightly disillusioned when he first called
on Gottsched. He appeared at Gottsched's door. I do not know
whether or not the servant sensed something of Goethe's nature,
but he admitted him directly into the presence of Gottsched
without taking the time to announce him in the proper manner.
So Goethe came upon the great man without his wig, standing
there quite baldheaded. To a learned man in the year 1765 this
was something quite dreadful. Goethe, who was sensitive to such
things, had to witness how Gottsched seized his wig with a
graceful turn and jammed it on his head, and how with his other
hand he slapped his servant on the face. Goethe's enthusiasm
was a little chilled. But he was still more chilled by the fact
that Gottsched's entire demeanor corresponded little with that
for which he longed.

Nor
did Gellert's
(Note 6)
moralistic lectures speak to him of
the comprehensive intellectual horizons he desired. Therefore,
he soon turned his attention more to the medical and scientific
lectures, which were in a way continued in the home of
Professor Ludwig, where he took his lunch and where much of a
similar nature was discussed. It cannot really be said that
Goethe “studied thoroughly jurisprudence, medicine, philosophy
and, unfortunately, also theology”
(Note 7)
in Leipzig, but
he got a view of them and, most important, it was in Leipzig
that he absorbed many a scientific concept of his time. After
having busied himself with the sciences, having experienced
various aspects of life, and having been involved in various
affairs, he then became so ill that he stood face to face with
death. Such things must be taken fully into account by one who
considers the human being in a spiritual scientific way. We
must realize how much passed through his soul as he actually
faced death because of extremely severe and recurring
hemorrhaging. He was weakened, had to return home, and could
not resume his university studies for some time.

When Goethe did continue his studies in Strassburg, he joined
the circle of an important personality who became of
exceptional significance to him. In order to judge with what
feelings he met this personality, we must recall that, when he
returned to Frankfurt under the influence of those inner
experiences through which he had passed in Leipzig when he was
face to face with death, he had already begun to enter more
deeply, through association with various persons, into a
mystical experience and a mystical conception of the world. He
had immersed himself in mystic, occult writings and sought in a
youthful way to elaborate a systematic world conception that
took its point of departure in mystical — one might say,
mystic-cabalistic — points of view. Even then he endeavored to
learn “what secret force/ dwells in the world and rules its course”
(Note 8)
and to open himself to the influence of
“every working force and seed.”
(Note 9)
He was unwilling merely “to trade in words,” as he had seen this done
in Leipzig.

Then he came to Strassburg where he could again attend lectures
on science, and this is what he did at first. Jurisprudence,
which was so dear to his father but less so to him, would be
taken care of somehow, no doubt, but his most urgent impulse
was to investigate how various laws of nature conform to one
another. As he was once ascending a flight of stairs, he met a
personality who immediately made a tremendous impression on
him, not only through his external appearance, but also through
an inner light that radiated through a highly intelligent
countenance. Externally, a man approached him who had, indeed,
somewhat the appearance of a priest, but who wore his long
overcoat in such a curious way that the train was stuffed into
his hind pockets. The man who made such a grand impression on
Goethe was Herder.
(Note 10)

Goethe now entered vitally into all that then stirred
tempestuously in Herder, and that was indeed a good deal. One
might say that Herder bore within him an entirely new world
conception. Basically, what had never before been undertaken,
Herder bore it brilliantly within himself; that is, the
endeavor to trace the phenomena of the world from the simplest
entity, the simplest lifeless thing, through the plant world to
the animal kingdom, on to man, to history, and even to the
divine governance of the world in history. At that time,
Herder's mind already harbored a vast, comprehensive view of
the world, and he spoke with enthusiasm about his new ideas;
but he also on occasion spoke with indignation against all
pedantic, traditional ideas. Many of these conversations with
Herder animated Goethe. That everything in the world is in
process of evolution and that a spiritual plan of the universe
sustains all evolution was a connection Herder perceived as no
one ever had before. But this was still growing in him, and he
had not yet expressed it on paper. Goethe received it in this
state of being born and shared in Herder's aspiration,
contemplation, and struggle. We may say that Herder wished to
trace the evolution of the world from a grain of dust through
all the kingdoms of nature up to God. He then did this in a
splendid comprehensive fashion, as far as was necessary at that
time, in his incomparable work,
Ideas for a Philosophy of Human History.
Here we can really see that Herder's mind
grasped everything that was then known of the facts of nature
and of the human realm, but all this knowledge was condensed
into a world conception permeated with spirit.

Beside this, Goethe received through Herder an idea of
Spinoza's contribution to the evolution of a new concept of the
world, and this worked on him. The leaning that Goethe showed
throughout his life toward Spinoza
(Note 11)
was planted in him at that time in Strassburg by Herder.
(Note 12)

Herder was an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare,
(Note 13)
which was something unheard of at that time. Just think how
this peculiar polarity of souls must have worked between Herder
and Goethe when Goethe, yearning to perceive these things that
contemporary culture could not give him, found in Herder a
revolutionary spirit of the first rank storming the culture of
his day. Up to that time Goethe had learned to revere that art
of form that is found in Corneille and Racine,
(Note 14)
and had taken all this in as one takes in things that are said
to be the most important in the world. But he had absorbed all
this with a certain inner indignation. When Herder introduced
him to Shakespeare, it worked on his mind like a breath of
fresh air. Here was a poet free from everything formal — who
created characters directly from human individualities; who
possessed nothing of all the unity of time, place, and action
that Goethe had learned to value so highly, but who presented
human beings in his plays. We may say that a revolutionary
cultural mood came to life in Goethe, now baptized in the name
of Shakespeare, which we may express thus: I want to comprehend
what constitutes the human being himself, not how he is put
into the interrelationships of the world by formal rules and
laws, or by the network of unities of situation, time, place,
and action.

In
this regard, he was able to become acquainted with men then in
Strassburg who sought to look into the deeper and more intimate
aspects of the life of the soul. One of them was the remarkable
Jung-Stilling,
(Note 15)
for example, who was studying the
occult aspects of the life of the soul and knew how to describe
them thoroughly. His life history, his description of what he
calls the “gray man” who rules in the subterranean sphere of
the earth, belongs among the finest descriptions of occult
relationships. It may be said that Goethe was introduced by
Herder to all that belongs to the life of nature and history,
the aesthetic in life, and by Jung-Stilling to the occult
aspects of human life, with which he had already familiarized
himself in Frankfurt through an exhaustive study of Swedenborg.
(Note 16)

Such ideas fermented in Goethe's mind in connection with what
had been passed on to him as the laws of nature while he was
attending lectures on the sciences in Strassburg. Then he began
to see the great problems and questions of human life. He
looked deeply into what can be cognized and what can be willed
by man, and into the relation between human nature and
universal nature. Earlier in Frankfurt he had become acquainted
with the work of Paracelsus
(Note 17)
in connection with all
this. And thus, a profound longing to perceive “every working
force and seed” took a hold of him, especially in Strassburg
along with all that he otherwise experienced there.

It
must not be imagined that, in Strassburg, Goethe simply trifled
away his time during his frequent visits to the pastor's home
in Sesenheim,
(Note 18)
although I certainly do not want to
deprecate the importance of these visits. He was always capable
of uniting life in the depths of man's will and cognition with
life in association with the immediately human and ordinary,
and with every human destiny.

After he had defended his dissertation, he became a sort of
Doctor of Jurisprudence — Licentiate
(Note 19)
and Doctor of Jurisprudence. He thereby satisfied his father and
could return home. The practice of law began, but there was a
notable disharmony in the soul of this man who had to study legal
documents at the Supreme Court in Wetzlar that were often
literally hundreds of years old. There “law and rights like an
endless illness” dragged along their weary way. Even in later
times much of this sort of thing could still be experienced
elsewhere. In a place where I grew up — permit me to interject
this — I was able to experience the following. In the 1870s
when I was a boy, we once heard that a man was to be imprisoned
— in the seventies! He was a much respected man who had a
rather large business for such a place. He was imprisoned for a
year and a half, I think, because in 1848 he had thrown stones
at an inn during the revolution! The lawsuit had actually
continued from 1848 when, as a young boy, this person had
thrown stones at an inn, until his present age. In 1873 he was
imprisoned for a year and a half. It was, perhaps, not so bad
then as when Goethe studied the documents at the Supreme Court,
but it was still bad enough.

Goethe's work gave his father immense pleasure, and he shared
with counsel and help the problems Goethe had to solve with the
dusty documents. This is not to say, however, that Goethe was
lacking in skill as a lawyer. That was by no means the case. He
made his contribution as an attorney and his work at that time
belies the recurring belief that a great spirit, living in the
world of ideals, must be deficient in practical life. He was
not at all lacking as an attorney. When lawyers these days
point to their busy schedules and call attention to the fact
that they have no time to read Goethe's works, one should point
out to them that Goethe was unquestionably just as good a
lawyer as they. That can be documented, as can many things
related to his work. But in addition to being just as practical
as only a practical man can be, Goethe at this time also
carried within him the idea for his book,
Götz von Berlichingen.
(Note 20)
Indeed, he bore within him the
idea for his Faust, too, which had already emerged in
Frankfurt from his scientific studies and later from his
acquaintance with Herder and Jung-Stilling.

Götz von Berlichingen — Gottfried von Berlichingen
— evidences at once, as Goethe forms it into a work of art,
what his own nature really was. Goethe's way of being
introduces a new element into the intellectual activity of
humanity. As artist or poet, he cannot be compared with Dante,
Homer, or Shakespeare. He stands in a different relationship to
poetic creation, and this is bound up, in turn, with the way
his mode of being relates to the age in which he lives. This
age, as it was expressed in his immediate, and also in his more
comprehensive, environment, did not permit such a spirit as his
to blend wholly with the period. The life of the state that we
today take for granted did not exist around him. After all, he
lived in a region where certain territories had, to a high
degree, taken on individual forms. How this came about is not
important, but he did not live in a large state. No great
all-encompassing conformity spread over the area where he lived
and grew up. The life about him was not narrowly organized and
thus he could experience it everywhere in its individual
manifestations and simultaneously expose himself to its
universal meaning. And this is what distinguishes Goethe from
other poets.

One
day a book came into his hands that is, indeed, badly written
but that interested him immensely. It was
Autobiography of the Iron-handed Gottfried of Berlichingen,
which dealt with
that strange individual who participated in so many events of
the sixteenth century, but whose part in them was of such a
peculiar nature. When we read this autobiography, we see how,
under the Emperor Maximilian and Charles the Fifth, he came
into contact with every possible kind of person and took part
in every possible kind of quarrel and battle during the first
half of the century.

His
activities, however, always come about in such a way that he
takes part in one event, is wholly involved in it and expresses
himself completely therein. Then he becomes involved in another
event in an entirely different role; he is drawn into that,
fights for the most varied issues, and is later captured. After
he has bound himself by an oath not to take any further part in
quarrels and is thereby left at peace in his castle in middle
South Germany, he becomes involved in the peasant uprising. All
this, however, occurs in such a way that we see he is never
forced by the events; but what holds these disparate episodes
together is really his personality, the character of Gottfried
himself. When one reads the autobiography of this man, I will
not say that the events in which he is involved bore one to
death, but we are not really interested in his quarrels and
battles. Yet, in spite of all the boredom of the single events,
we are always interested in his personality, so strong in
character and so rich in content.

These traits, however, are just what attracted Goethe to
Gottfried of Berlichingen. Thus, he could see the substance,
the life, and the struggle of the sixteenth century
concentrated in one personality as he could never otherwise
have seen it. This was what he needed. To him, this meant
taking up history and becoming acquainted with it. The way in
which one or another historian, after having searched through
attics and wastebaskets, telescopes together in a few
“pragmatic maxims”
(Note 21)
individual historical periods
would certainly not have suited Goethe. But to see a man
standing alive in the midst of it, to see reflected in a human
soul what is otherwise not of special interest, this had some
meaning for him. He took this tedious, badly written
autobiography of Gottfried of Berlichingen, read it, and really
changed its content remarkably little. For this reason, he
called the first version of this drama, if we choose so to
designate it,
The History of Gottfried of Berlichingen with the Iron Hand,
Dramatized.
He did not use the term
drama, but dramatized. He had really only
dramatized the history of Gottfried of Berlichingen, but in
such a way that the whole period became alive through this man.
Bear in mind, it was the sixteenth century, the time of the
dawn of the post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe perceived this time
through the character of Gottfried of Berlichingen, the man who
grew up in middle South Germany.

At
that time a fragment of life had already passed through
Goethe's mind that is historical but seen really within actual
life, not in what is “historic.” It would not have been
possible for him then, with all those problems of humanity in
his mind to which I have alluded, to take just any individual
and dramatize his life according to history. However, to
dramatize the stammering autobiography of a being who worked
upon him with complete humanness in such a way that it would
reflect the dramatic art as revealed to him through the reading
of Shakespeare, that was something he could do. So he became
known in certain circles that were interested in this sort of
thing since he had lifted a fragment of the past, which was a
book sealed with seven seals, into his own present world. Of
course, just as little was then known about what Goethe
disclosed by means of the badly written history of Gottfried of
the Sixteenth Century as is known today by many a pastor about
the super-sensible life.

Goethe had taken hold of human life. He had to, since his life
style was one that made him blend with life as it revealed
itself directly to him. To be sure, he continued to stand on an
isolated pedestal, but as life touched him, he became one with
it.

Goethe was to be brought into union with life in still another
way. There is little conception today of something that
constituted a profound trait of the soul life in the so-called
cultured world surrounding Goethe. People had become bound, as
it were, to what had come about since the sixteenth century. In
public life, the laws and statutes had been handed down like an
inherited disease,
(Note 22)
but the souls of men were,
nevertheless, touched in a certain way by what we recognize as
the impulse of souls of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The
result was that, for the most deeply endowed natures, a
profound disharmony ensued between what they sensed within the
soul and what took place in the external world. This, to be
sure, led to a marked sentimentality in experience.

To
sense as strongly as possible how wide the gulf was between the
actual world and what a true and warm human soul could feel, to
express this contrast with all possible emphasis, was felt by
many to be a profound necessity. The eye was directed toward
the life of the world in which various ranks of society and the
people with their various interests lived. But they often had
little soul contact with each other in this public life. Yet,
when these human beings were alone, they sought for a special
life of the soul existing apart from external life, and for
them to be able to say to themselves that this external life
was wholly unlike all that the soul would strive after and hope
for was felt to be a great relief. To get into such a
sentimental mood was a characteristic of the age. Life, as it
was publicly manifest, was felt to be bad and defective. People
strove to search for life where it had not been besmirched by
indifferent public existence, and where they could really enter
in a vital way into the silent working and weaving of the world
of nature, the peaceful life of animals and plants.

From this a mood gradually arose that affected many cultured
spirits. To be able to weep over the disharmonies of the world
afforded a tremendous satisfaction. Those writers were
especially honored whose works tended to induce a flood of
tears to fall upon the pages that were being read. To be
unhappy constituted for many the very happiness for which they
longed. Someone takes a walk in the forest; he then returns
and, sitting quite still in his room, reflects: “How many, many
little flowers and tiny worms that I did not notice and trod
under foot have sacrificed their lives to this walk of mine!”
Then he weeps hot tears into his handkerchief over the discord
between nature and human life. Letters written to beloved
friends who were as sentimental as the writer begin with such
expressions as “Dearly beloved Friend,” and this, too, is
moistened by a tear that falls on the paper and hastens away
with the letter as a precious testimony to the friend.

This life still permeated a large part of the cultured world in
the second half of the eighteenth century. It also surrounded
Goethe, and he had much understanding of it, for there was much
truth in this feeling of the disharmony between the frequently
unconscious or vague feelings of the soul and what was afforded
by the outer world, and Goethe could feel the truth in it. In
those days, the silent plan of life between souls was not at
all similar to what took place in the world as a whole. He had
to go through this because he could be, and needed to be,
touched by everything. But, in his contact with these things,
he had to draw health-giving forces from his inner self
repeatedly.

And
thus in his youthful novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther,
he wrote himself free of this whole temper of the age, which we
call Siegwart,
(Note 23)
or Werther, fever, and which had
taken possession of a large part of educated society. In the
figure of Werther he concealed to such a degree as to come near
to suicide what he had shared of this sentimental mood and the
disharmonies of the world. It is for this reason that he has
Werther end his life through suicide. It is well to consider
that, on the one hand, it was possible for Goethe to be bound
up with everything in the souls of those about him, even though
he was so firmly rooted in his own individuality. On the other
hand, what he was writing about cleansed his soul and at the
same time became a work of art. After he had finished
Werther, he was completely cured of him, whereas in many
cases other persons were only then possessed because through
the influence of the Werther, Werther fever raged in the
most widespread circles. Goethe, however, was cured.

In
estimating such things, we must not overlook the fact that
Goethe possessed a broad inner horizon so that he could, in a
sense, live within himself in polaric contrasts. He went through
the Werther sickness and wrote himself free of it through
The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Yet, there is
truth in what he wrote to a friend at that time. He sketched a
picture of his loftily sentimental mood, but also said there
was a Goethe other than the suicidal Goethe who harbored
thoughts of hanging himself and who entertained thoughts for
which he ought to be hanged. There was also a carnival Goethe,
(Note 24)
who could put on all sorts of masks and
disguises, and this Goethe also really lived artistically. We
need only allow the more or less fragmentary dramatic creations
of that time, Satyros and Pater Brey, to work
upon us, and we shall be able to sense the scope of his inner
life: on the one hand, the sentimentality of Werther, on
the other, the humor of the Satyros and Pater
Brey.

Satyros, the deified forest devil who develops a veritable
pantheism and does not enjoy the fruits of culture, wants to
return to nature in genuine Rousseau fashion. Raw chestnuts —
what a royal repast! Such is the ideal of Satyros. But he is
really a philosopher of nature who is quite familiar with its
secrets, and — if you will excuse me — he wins his followers
especially among women, is deified, but finally behaves quite
badly. Here all false yearning after authoritarian belief is
ridiculed with immense humor. Then in Pater Brey we see
the cult of false prophets play a part and, under the mask of
holiness, do all kinds of things. This, indeed, is not
ridiculed but objectively presented with much humor. Here
Goethe is a humorist in the most vital sense — a blunt
humorist, expressing it all from the same constitution of soul
that created Werther. He was able to do this not because
he was superficial but because he was profound enough to grasp
the polarities of human life.

Especially the Werther book gained Goethe a far-reaching
reputation. It became well-known rather early,
(Note 25)
and it was really this work that led the Archduke of Weimar to take
an interest in him. The Gottfried of Berlichingen made a
decided impression, but not among those who then considered
themselves capable of understanding culture, art, and poetry.
“An abominable imitation of bad English works; a disgusting
platitude,” said an eminent man of the time about this book.
(Note 26)

It
was in 1775 that Goethe was able to transfer his activities to
a different field of operation, to Weimar. The Duke of Weimar
(Note 27)
became acquainted with Goethe and called
him there, where he became the minister of state.

Nowadays, after the event, people have the feeling that Goethe
had already written the
Gottfried of Berlichingen,
The Sorrows of Young Werther,
and even carried with him to
Weimar a large part of his Faust; they see in all this
his most important accomplishment. He himself did not consider
them to be of first importance at that time, but they were only
the scrapings of his life. The Duke, likewise, did not appoint
him court poet, but minister of state, which caused the pedants
in Weimar to be beside themselves with anger. The Duke had to
address a sort of epistolary decree to his people in which he
justified himself by saying that Goethe was in his eyes simply
a greater man than the pedants. The fact that he was made
minister of state without having been previously — what shall
I say? — under-councillor and upper-councillor, required at
least some justification from the Duke, and that is what he
produced.

Goethe was by no means a bad statesman and performed his
ministerial duties not as part time work, but as matters of
first importance. He was a far better statesman than many a
minister who was not a Goethe in our sense. Anyone who
personally convinces himself — as I may say with all modesty
that I have done — of the way in which he performed his
ministerial obligations will know that he was an excellent
minister for the Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar and was completely
devoted to his duties. Being a minister was his chief
occupation, and he achieved a good deal during his ten years in
this capacity.

He
had brought with him a part of his Faust, which is
listed in the collected works under the delectable title,
The Primordial Faust (Ur-Faust).
All that we might call
the upward vision of Faust was already alive in this version.
How directly had Faust been taken from the life that touches
every human soul!

In
Weimar it was evident again that Goethe could not be completely
captured by his environment. We often become acquainted with
persons who are, in greater or lesser degree, merely the
exponents of their files. Goethe, however, was not merely the
exponent of the numerous documents he drew up as a Weimar
functionary. In addition, he acclimated himself to the
conditions in Weimar and, even though he remained on his
isolated pedestal, he was nevertheless touched by everything
human. The immediately human took form with him as art. Thus we
see how the character of a woman, Frau von Stein,
(Note 28)
with whom he formed a friendship, became a life problem for
him. It was fundamentally his immediate view of her character
that was the cause of his dramatizing the figure of
Iphigenia.
He wished to put into artistic form what
worked on him in the character of Frau von Stein, and the
legend of Iphigenia was only the means for solving this life
problem. The relationships at the Weimar court, his life with
Duke Karl August, whose character was so strangely endowed, his
view of the fate of the Duchess, and other connected
circumstances, all became problems to him. Life became a
question. He again needed a subject in order to master these
relationships in an artistic way, and to do so he took that of
Tasso.
It was, however, really the Weimar situation that
he artistically mastered.

It
is, of course, impossible to enter here into the many details
of Goethe's mental life, yet I wish to place these facts before
you in order that we may form a spiritual scientific contact
with them as examples. Even in the most early period of his
stay in Weimar, through the various circumstances into which he
was brought, the possibility arose of deepening his studies in
natural science by independent work. He continued his plant
studies and began anatomical studies at the University of Jena.
He endeavored in everything to confirm in detail the ideas of
the universal interrelationships he had received from Herder.
He wished to study the connections within the plant kingdom and
what was spiritually alive in plants. He wished to hold the
kinship among the animals before his mind and to find the path
upward from them to man. He wished to study the idea of
evolution in direct connection with actual natural objects. You
see, Goethe had taken up Herder's great idea to study the
evolutionary phrases of all entities, a unitary spiritual
process of becoming. In this thought he and Herder then stood
practically alone because those who dominated the intellectual
life of the time thought quite otherwise; everything was
pigeonholed.

All
intellectual activity can be found to work in two polaric
directions: toward separation and toward union. It was
important for Goethe and Herder to bring unity into diversity
and multiplicity; others were simply content with neat
classifications and clever division. For these people, the
problem was to show, for example, how man is distinguished from
the animal. Man, it was said, has no intermaxillary bone in the
upper jaw in which the incisors are rooted, but only a unitary
jawbone; only the animals have an intermaxillary bone. Goethe
was certainly not materialistically inclined, and he had no
desire to establish materialism. The thought, however, that the
inner harmony of nature could not be confirmed because of such
a detail offended his intelligence. He therefore undertook to
prove, in opposition to all scientific authorities, that man
also has an intermaxillary bone, and he succeeded. He thus
arrived at his first important scientific treatise entitled,
An Intermaxillary Bone Is to Be Ascribed to Man as Well as
to the Animal.
(Note 29)
He had thereby introduced a
single detail into the evolution of thought with which he
opposed the entire scientific world, and which is now an
obvious, undisputed truth.

Goethe appears, not as the poet of Werther, of
Gottfried, and of Faust, or as the poet in whose
head Iphigenia and Tasso came into being, but as
one possessing a profound insight into the interrelationships
of nature, so that he now studies and labors as a genuine
research scientist. We have here, not a one-sided scientist,
poet, or minister; he is a complete human being aspiring in all
directions.

Goethe lived in Weimar for about ten years and then could no
longer suppress his yearning to go to Italy. So in the late
eighties he undertook a journey to Italy as if it were an
escape. We must not forget that he then, for the first time,
entered into situations that he had longed for and cherished
from his earliest youth. This was his first introduction to the
world at large; you must remember that he had never before seen
any other large city except Frankfurt. We must also not forget
that Rome was the first city through which he viewed the
theater of world history. This must be included in his life and
also that he felt the whole stream of life pulsating in Rome as
it had risen in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe united
what then worked upon him as world history with the
comprehensive world conception germinating in his mind. He
traced the idea throughout the multiplicity of forms of plants,
stones, and animals he had compared, and now followed them over
the Apennine peninsula. He endeavored to confirm the idea of
the "archetypal plant" over the broadest area and was able to
do so. Every stone and plant interested him. How the multifold
comes into form as the unit, this he allowed to work upon
him.

Goethe also exposed himself to the influence of the great works
of art, which revealed to him ancient Hellenism in its last
feeble outgrowth. As he directed his objective glance over the
multiplicity of nature, so also could he feel in the depths of
his soul all the intimacies of the great art of the
Renaissance. One need only read the words he spoke upon viewing
Raphael's Saint Cecilia in Bologna, how, as he looked at
it, he experienced in a wonderfully profound and intense manner
all those feelings that lead man out of the sensory world into
the super-sensible. One need only read in his
Journey to Italy
how, as he gradually deepened his ideas of nature, he
sensed in the presence of works of art that man really creates
such works only when art works creatively from the depths of
life. Greek art, he said, now became clear to him: “I have an
intimation that they proceed according to the same laws by
which nature proceeds and which I am tracing,”
(Note 30)
and “These lofty works of art, being also the highest works of
nature, have been created by man according to true and natural
laws. Everything arbitrary, all mere fancy, falls away; there
is necessity, there is God.”
(Note 31)
So he wrote to his Weimar friends.

Goethe took into himself something stupendous, and what he had
previously felt and surmised now took form. Scenes of great
importance in his Faust were composed at this time in
Rome.
Iphigenia
and
Tasso
had already been
sketched and partly completed in Weimar. Now he rewrote them in
verse. As he exposed himself constantly to classic works of
art, he was now able to find the classic style that he wished
to pour into these works. This was a regeneration, an actual
rebirth of the soul, that he experienced in Italy. Thus,
something peculiar now took form in his soul. He sensed a
profound contrast between the aspirations of his age in what he
had observed in his environment and what he had learned to feel
as the loftiest expression of the purely human.

Goethe returned to Weimar to the world where works had been
produced that entranced everybody. Schiller's
The Robbers,
(Note 32)
Heinse's Ardinghello, and
other such literary reproductions seemed to him barbaric stuff;
they contradicted everything that was now rooted and living in
his soul. He felt within like an utterly lonely person and had,
indeed, been almost completely forgotten when a path was opened
for the friendship with Schiller.
(Note 33)
The approach was
difficult because nothing was more repugnant to him when he
first returned than Schiller's youthful works. But the two men
discovered one another, and in such a way as to establish a
bond of friendship almost without counterpart in history. They
stimulated one another, and Hermann Grimm rightly remarks that
in their relationship we have, not only Goethe plus Schiller,
but Schiller plus Goethe as well.
(Note 34)
Each became something different through the other; each enriched
the other.

Profound, all-embracing human problems arose in the soul of
Goethe and Schiller. What had to be resolved by the world in a
political way — the vast problem of human freedom — was
present before their minds as a spiritually human problem.
Others gave much thought to the question of how an external
institution that would guarantee man freedom in his life could
be established in the world, but to Schiller the problem was:
how does man find freedom within his own soul? He devoted
himself to this problem in developing his unique work,
Letters Regarding the Aesthetic Education of Humanity.
For Schiller the question was how man guides his soul above
himself, from the ordinary status of life to a higher status.
Man stands, on the one hand, within sensory nature, said
Schiller; on the other, he stands face to face with the realm
of logic. In neither is he free. He becomes free when he enjoys
and creates aesthetically, when his thoughts develop in such a
way that they are under compulsion, not of logic, but of taste
and inclination, and at the same time, free of the sensible.
Schiller demanded a middle position.

These Letters
Regarding the Aesthetic Education of Humanity
of Schiller belong among mankind's most cultivated
writings. But it was a question, a human riddle, that he and
Goethe had faced in thought. Goethe could not penetrate this
problem philosophically in abstract thoughts as Schiller had
done. He had to attack it in a living way, and he resolved it
comprehensively in his own way in the fairy tale of
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
When Schiller undertook
to show philosophically how man ascends from ordinary life to a
higher life, Goethe undertook to show in his fairy tale,
through the interplay of spiritual forces in the human soul,
how man evolves spiritually from an everyday soul life to a
higher one. What Schiller brought to light in a philosophic,
abstract way, Goethe presented it in a magnificent visible form
in this fairy tale. This he attached to a description of
external life in his novel-like piece
Conversations of German Emigrants.
There really came to life in the inspired
friendship between Goethe and Schiller all that man proposes to
himself in riddling questions about life, and that is related
to Faust's explanation of why he turned to a magic
interpretation of the world:

[That I might]
Her vital powers, her embryo seeds, survey,
And fling the trade in empty words away.
(Note 35)

Whoever penetrates the intellectual exchanges between Goethe
and Schiller and sees what at that time came to life in the
spirit of these two men receives through it as yet unrecognized
and unrealized spiritual treasure — a treasure which manifests
the aspirations of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in an
extraordinary manner. The innermost concern of the two was
manifested through the way in which Schiller undertook to solve
the riddle of man philosophically in his
Aesthetic Letters,
the way Goethe addressed himself to the realm of
color in order to oppose Newton, and the ways he depicts the
evolution of the human soul in the fairy tale of
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
All this comprises
comprehensive questions that were destined, it would seem, to
be of vital concern to but a few people.

Even though we have wished thus far to touch only upon such
facts as bear upon the life of Goethe, it must also be remarked
that, although many people nowadays believe they are capable of
speaking about him, for many this Goethe period belongs to the
past and is a book sealed with seven seals. In a certain sense,
we may really feel pleased when someone is quite honest about
this. It was, of course, narrow-minded of the famous scientist
Dubois-Reymond
(Note 36)
to deliver his discourse
Goethe and No End.
The same man, a rector of a university, who had
previously described the limitations of a knowledge of nature
and had made so many remarkable physiological discoveries,
delivered his discourse on
Goethe and No End!
His remarks were narrow-minded because they arose from the opinion:
“Yes, so many people talk about one who, after all, was only a
dilettante; Goethe, the universal dilettante, is forever the
subject of discussion. But how much have we since acquired
about which he was, of course, totally ignorant — the cell
theory, for example, the theory of electricity and advances in
physiology!” All that was present in Dubois-Reymond's mind.
“What was Goethe in comparison? People talk about his
Faust as if he had given us an ideal of humanity.”

Dubois-Reymond cannot see that Goethe really did set before us
an ideal for humanity. He asks: “Would it not have been better
to make Faust greater than Goethe made him and more useful for
humanity? Goethe places before us a wretched fellow” —
Dubois-Reymond did not use this expression but what he says is
approximately the same — “a wretched fellow who cannot even
master his own inner problems. Then, if Faust had been a
virtuous fellow, he would have married Gretchen instead of
seducing her; he would have invented the electric generator and
the air pump and have become a famous professor.” He says quite
literally that if Faust had been a decent man, he would have
married Gretchen and not seduced her. He would have invented
the generator and air pump and would have performed other
services for humanity and not have become such a debauched
genius who got involved in all sorts of spiritistic
nonsense.

Such a rectoral address, heard at the close of the nineteenth
century, was certainly narrow-minded. Yet at least it is
honest. We could wish that such honesty might appear more
often; it is delightful because it corresponds with the truth.
Thrice mendacious, however, is much of the laudation for Goethe
and Faust that is brought forth by people who are happy
“only when they find earthworms.” The quotations from Goethe
that we often hear are really only spiritual earthworms even
though they are Goethe's own words.

Precisely through the relationship of our time with such a
spirit as Goethe's is it possible to study the deep untruth of
the present age. Many people do nothing more than “trade in
words,”
(Note 37)
even trade in the very words of Goethe,
whereas his world conception contains an element of everything
that leads to and must come to birth in the future evolution of
mankind. As we have already suggested, this element not only
unites with spiritual science, but is by its very nature
already tied to spiritual science.